Doina and her husband left for Canada in the late 1970s, I don’t remember exactly when, and then they settled in Milwaukee, in the USA.
- Traditions 11756
- Language spoken 3019
- Identity 7808
- Description of town 2440
- Education, school 8506
- Economics 8772
- Work 11672
- Love & romance 4929
- Leisure/Social life 4159
- Antisemitism 4822
-
Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
- Doctor's Plot (1953) 178
- Soviet invasion of Poland 31
- Siege of Leningrad 86
- The Six Day War 4
- Yom Kippur War 2
- Ataturk's death 5
- Balkan Wars (1912-1913) 35
- First Soviet-Finnish War 37
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia 1938 83
- Invasion of France 9
- Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 65
- Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax) 36
- First World War (1914-1918) 216
- Spanish flu (1918-1920) 14
- Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) 4
- The Great Depression (1929-1933) 20
- Hitler comes to power (1933) 127
- 151 Hospital 1
- Fire of Thessaloniki (1917) 9
- Greek Civil War (1946-49) 12
- Thessaloniki International Trade Fair 5
- Annexation of Bukovina to Romania (1918) 7
- Annexation of Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union (1940) 19
- The German invasion of Poland (1939) 94
- Kishinev Pogrom (1903) 7
- Romanian Annexation of Bessarabia (1918) 25
- Returning of the Hungarian rule in Transylvania (1940-1944) 43
- Soviet Occupation of Bessarabia (1940) 59
- Second Vienna Dictate 27
- Estonian war of independence 3
- Warsaw Uprising 2
- Soviet occupation of the Balitc states (1940) 147
- Austrian Civil War (1934) 9
- Anschluss (1938) 71
- Collapse of Habsburg empire 3
- Dollfuß Regime 3
- Emigration to Vienna before WWII 36
- Kolkhoz 131
- KuK - Königlich und Kaiserlich 40
- Mineriade 1
- Post War Allied occupation 7
- Waldheim affair 5
- Trianon Peace Treaty 12
- NEP 56
- Russian Revolution 351
- Ukrainian Famine 199
- The Great Terror 283
- Perestroika 233
- 22nd June 1941 468
- Molotov's radio speech 115
- Victory Day 147
- Stalin's death 365
- Khrushchev's speech at 20th Congress 148
- KGB 62
- NKVD 153
- German occupation of Hungary (18-19 March 1944) 45
- Józef Pilsudski (until 1935) 33
- 1956 revolution 84
- Prague Spring (1968) 73
- 1989 change of regime 174
- Gomulka campaign (1968) 81
-
Holocaust
9685
- Holocaust (in general) 2789
- Concentration camp / Work camp 1235
- Mass shooting operations 337
- Ghetto 1183
- Death / extermination camp 647
- Deportation 1063
- Forced labor 791
- Flight 1410
- Hiding 594
- Resistance 121
- 1941 evacuations 866
- Novemberpogrom / Kristallnacht 34
- Eleftherias Square 10
- Kasztner group 1
- Pogrom in Iasi and the Death Train 21
- Sammelwohnungen 9
- Strohmann system 11
- Struma ship 17
- Life under occupation 803
- Yellow star house 72
- Protected house 15
- Arrow Cross ("nyilasok") 42
- Danube bank shots 6
- Kindertransport 26
- Schutzpass / false papers 95
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) 24
- Warsaw Uprising (1944) 23
- Helpers 521
- Righteous Gentiles 269
- Returning home 1090
- Holocaust compensation 112
- Restitution 109
- Property (loss of property) 595
- Loss of loved ones 1724
- Trauma 1029
- Talking about what happened 1807
- Liberation 558
- Military 3322
- Politics 2640
-
Communism
4468
- Life in the Soviet Union/under Communism (in general) 2592
- Anti-communist resistance in general 63
- Nationalization under Communism 221
- Illegal communist movements 98
- Systematic demolitions under communism 45
- Communist holidays 311
- Sentiments about the communist rule 930
- Collectivization 94
- Experiences with state police 349
- Prison/Forced labor under communist/socialist rule 449
- Lack or violation of human and citizen rights 483
- Life after the change of the regime (1989) 493
- Israel / Palestine 2190
- Zionism 847
- Jewish Organizations 1200
Displaying 47971 - 48000 of 50826 results
Felicia Menzel
My sister married Ioan Sangeorzan, a Romanian, in 1944. He was a technician, and during the war he studied law in Cluj, but he was drafted by force into the Romanian army. He ran away, however, and came to Brasov. His brother had rented a room in our apartment here, that's how they met. They didn't have a religious wedding.
However, Zoltan, Zoli as was his nickname, and I paid membership fees to the Jewish community. I did participate in conferences when important scholars or well-read Jews were invited to talk during communism. I remember listening to Mr. Nicolae Cajal [member of the Romanian Academy, President of the Jewish Communities Federation of Romania].
In my new family, we only observed some of the traditions; we observed only the High Holidays, especially Pesach. I was working, Saturdays weren’t free, so I didn’t observe the Sabbath and didn’t light candles on Friday evenings. The hours at work were long, and then there were the chores around the house when I came back home, there was no time for tradition.
My mother-in-law was a religious woman, but it was a different story with my father-in-law, who got baptized. It was such a scandal! When he came to Brasov, he made friends with the Lutheran priest, and he finally got baptized, I believe the priest persuaded him. His wife was so angry with him, she didn’t speak to him for weeks. He did it when anti-Semitism started, maybe he was afraid, but when I asked him why he did it, he said that with Jews he had to wash his hands too often! It was a joke, of course, I think he was referring to the mikves, or to the fact that Jews were very clean people, and every time they used the toilet they washed their hands. My mother-in-law felt stranded from the community with such a husband, so she didn’t go the synagogue anymore.
His father, Iulius, worked as a commercial manager at a wood factory, and his mother, Etelka, was a housewife.
His mother tongue was Hungarian.
Romania
My husband also went to the Jewish school here, he took some classes while at High School; he was Rabbi Deutsch's favorite student!
He went to a German High School here in Brasov, called Honterus. [Named after Johannes Honterus, where all the classes are taught in German.] He graduated in 1933, when Hitler came to power and anti-Semitism started to spread. I think he was in a special class: all of them remained united and close until they grew old and died. Every year they celebrated the anniversary of their High School graduation, either in Munich, Germany, where some of his former colleagues were living at the time, or here, in Brasov.
After the war, my husband worked as an accountant.
Angela and Ioan also left for America in the late 1970s, they couldn’t stay away from their daughter, and they settled in Milwaukee as well.
Leo Lubich
My father had two assistants to put fabrics that my father was cutting together. My father was a highly skilled master artisan: he received orders and cut fabrics. His assistants’ names were Mayorov, a Russian, and Vassilkoskiy, a Jew. I remember them so well since they were Bolsheviks and were involved in spreading revolutionary propaganda. My father sympathized with the revolutionary cause and helped them; I remember him hiding piles of the flyers brought by Mayorov and Vassilkovskiy in the storeroom. My mother wasn’t happy about his getting involved and used to warn him in a whisper that the whole family might suffer or be killed.
I remember the horseshoe clatter and the yelling and singing of the Petliura 6 units that entered the town in 1917. There were other troops in town: the Reds 7 and the Whites 8. The power switched from one side to the other throughout the course of a single day, but I only remember the reckless, drunk Petliura soldiers. A day before the Petliura units came to the city, my father’s employees Mayorov and Vassilkovskiy left town. They dropped by our apartment to say goodbye to my father and to tell us that the Bolsheviks would achieve victory and return. In the morning, the Petliura soldiers spotted the cannon in the square in front of our house and began to fire at our building. All the Jews were hiding in their apartments and nobody dared to go outside. Petliura soldiers found our building's janitor and forced him to show them the apartments occupied by Jews. They forced Jews to come out into the yard and shot them under the poplar tree. Many of my friends, along with the Pressman family and their numerous children, were killed. Our family was lucky; we were wealthy and paid a ransom - the soldiers took our carpets, china, cuts of expensive fabrics and bronze statues, and left us alone. Petliura had his apartment and headquarters on the fifth floor of our house, but I never saw him. On the following day, Petliura’s order came down to take my father upstairs to his apartment. My mother was desperate - she fell on her knees wailing, she thought that Petliura had found out about my father’s Bolshevik friends. She didn’t believe we would see him again, but he returned after some time and told us that Petliura had heard that he was a great tailor and ordered a military jacket from him. When my father complained that Petliura's soldiers had taken away our belongings, he told my father to go to an officer and tell him that Petliura ordered our belongings returned. My mother and father had a discussion and decided to leave it alone. They decided they could forget about all the things they had earned and collected, since they were happy that we were all alive. Fortunately, my father didn’t ask for his property back, for who knows what would have happened if he had. I don’t remember whether my father had enough time to make a jacket for Petliura since the Red units came back soon after. My father’s assistants Mayorov and Vassilkovskiy returned, too. At the end of 1918, Soviet power was established in Kiev. The Civil War was over and NEP began 9.
We didn’t starve in the 1920s, nor in 1932-33 during the periods of famine 10. My father had money and my mother had the jewelry that she used to take to Torgsin 11 and exchange for food whenever we needed it. Torgsin stores were opened in Kiev in the early 1930s.
Our family observed Jewish traditions. We didn’t eat pork and followed kosher rules at home. I can’t remember any details about the Saturday celebrations, but I do remember that my father never worked on Saturdays. My mother lit candles and prayed over them on Friday and we had a festive dinner. The food on Saturday was made a day before and was left in the oven to stay warm. But my parents weren’t truly religious. They never prayed, but my father had a tallit, tefillin, and religious books in Hebrew - there were no other books at home. He had a seat at the synagogue at the bottom of Andreevskiy Spusk. He went there on Saturdays and on holidays with his tallit and tefillin on. The synagogue was not too big, but it was nice inside: it had velvet chairs and a stand for the rabbi.
I remember how our family celebrated Pesach. The apartment was cleaned thoroughly in advance. All the dust and dirt was swept away, the mattresses and carpets were cleaned, and the Pesach china and dishes were washed. My mother took out the special kosher dishes and utensils from an old box in the storeroom. There were silver wine sets and china and crystal dishes. My father brought home matzah from the synagogue. A few days before the holiday, my father took some poultry to the shochet. There was plenty of food made for Pesach: gefilte fish, pancakes, dishes made with matzah, chicken broth, fried chicken, stewed meat, and liver pastes. My father, wearing his tallit and teffilin, conducted the seder while leaning on pillows at the head of the table. One of my brothers – the younger one, Aron - went outside and father would hide a piece of matzah under a pillow. Aron came back and searched for the matzah. When he found it, he asked four traditional questions and our father gave answers. This was an annual ritual that we children enjoyed so very much. I have only dim memories of the other holidays. I only remember that my mother made delicious food and we sat together at the table.
When I turned five or six years old my father invited a Jewish teacher, a melammed, to teach me at home. He was an old Jew who wore a big black hat and payes [sidelocks]. He came from another end of Podol. He liked going by tram and used to take a longer ride and come back on foot. Our neighbors’ boys joined me and it was like a cheder school. We studied Hebrew and read Torah. I studied with him for about half a year. My parents spoke Russian and didn’t think that Yiddish had any future or that we might need it.
At seven years of age I went to the same Russian school where my older sister Maria studied. My father sent me to the nearest school in our neighborhood. In two or three years this school was turned into a Jewish school. I don’t know why it happened, but everything stayed the same anyway. Only the language of teaching changed. In the late 1930s it became Russian. There were Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish children in our school. We got along very well and never had any conflicts associated with nationality. We played sports together after school. When we became pioneers we began to attend clubs in the House of Pioneers. I attended a drama club where we studied recitation - we even put on a performance there. There were also sport, dancing, and technical clubs.
My father arranged a bar mitzvah for me in 1925. At this point, the synagogues still functioned and the authorities hadn't yet begun trying to stamp out religion. This struggle began in earnest in the 1930s 12. During my bar mitzvah I had a tallit put on, and tefillin placed on my hand and head, and I was taken to the synagogue. There I met the rabbi and he conducted the ritual. I don’t remember the ritual itself since I saw it as a game, but didn’t dare disobey my father by refusing to take part. The adults explained to me that I had come of age and could now come and pray at the synagogue. In reality, I stopped going to the synagogue since I was more taken by the communist ideology we learned at school and didn’t believe in God. I believed religion to be an ignorant vestige of the past.
After finishing lower secondary school I went to work. Besides having to support my parents, I wanted to have my own money to go to the cinema or buy sweets. But the unemployment rate was high at that point and it was hard to get a job. Beyond that, my father was an entrepreneur and it was only the children of workers and peasants that were given priority in terms of employment. I went to the "Assistance" employment agency in Podol. They helped me get a job as a weaver at the weaving mill. After working for two or three years I decided to continue my education. I had an agreement with another weaver that he would work the first shift from 8 am until 3 pm so that I could take the second shift and study at the rabfak 13 on Bolshaya Vassilkovskaya Street. Only the children of workers and peasants had a right to study there, but I had been given the status of worker by that time, having worked at the mill for a few years. I walked to the rabfak school located quite a distance from my home and after school I went to work. I studied well and was elected monitor of the group. I joined the Komsomol 14 and took part in various activities with them. We went to parades on 1 May and on October Revolution Day 15 and joined sports teams. At that time, young people had to accomplish sporting requirements to receive BGTO and GTO badges ["Be ready for labor and defense" and "Ready for labor and defense"]. I met all the requirements and was proud to receive a GTO badge - I wore it on the lapel of my jacket.
In the summer of 1933 I was invited to the military registry office where they notified me that after finishing the rabfak school I was to go serve in the army. At the rabfak school's prom, the rector of the Textile Institute told me, "Lubich, you are a good student and you need to continue your education." He offered to let me enter their Institute and get a release form service in the army. Although I wanted to continue my studies, I was patriotic and believed it would be indecent for a Soviet Komsomol member to avoid serving in the army. But when my parents heard about the doubts I was having, they told me that as the oldest son it was my job to get an education and support my family. So, I decided to go study. By that time I was no longer religious.
I entered the Textile Institute. In 1934 the government of Ukraine moved from Kharkov to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and with that a few of the less popular educational institutions (including mine) relocated to Kharkov. I lived in a hostel in Kharkov for a year. I was a good student, but I had some bad influences and started playing cards. We gambled every night and then had to pay back our debts when we lost. I began to work as a janitor and a laborer at the freight railway station. When my parents found out they insisted that I move home. I moved to Kiev after finishing my first year at the Textile Institute in Kharkov. In 1935 I got a transfer to the Faculty of Economics at the Kiev Institute of the Leather and Shoe Industry.
In 1936, during the period of repression, arrests began in the country 16. At first they arrested the Party and state officials, but then common people began to be arrested. There were portraits of Party leaders hanging in the concert hall of our Institute and we often saw some of them disappear. This meant that this person had been arrested. Some of our lecturers and students were arrested. I got very scared. Some time before I had corresponded with an American company that had published a manual for employees in the industry in which I planned to work. I wrote them that I was the owner of a few factories and plants and that I needed their assistance. I eventually received a parcel from the U.S. with the book Assistance for Workers. Every day when I left for the Institute I said a mental goodbye to my family. I was afraid of being arrested for having this relationship with foreigners, but fortunately, I wasn’t.
My father went to the only functioning synagogue in Kiev on big holidays. We continued to celebrate Jewish holidays at home, but we did it quietly and without guests.
Upon graduation from the Institute I worked at the shoe factory in Podol for two years. I later got a job at the military construction department where my brother Jacob worked.
In spring 1941, I met Rosa Finkler - a nice Jewish girl - at the canteen. Rosa was from Odessa. She was two years younger than I. She had graduated from the Odessa Food Industry Institute and often traveled to the grain elevator in Kiev. Rosa was an only child. Her parents lived in Odessa. They were clerks at an agricultural office. They didn’t observe any Jewish traditions. Rosa and I took walks in the parks on the bank of the Dnieper River, went to theaters, the philharmonic, and the circus.
Maybe it was this optimism that made the arrival of the war on 22 June 1941 such a complete surprise for me. Jacob and I, as well as all our colleagues, got a release from the army service. Uncle Boris, my father’s brother who lived in Izhevsk, called us in Kiev right after the war began. My mother wrote letters to my uncle before the war and he wrote back, but I had never seen him before. He invited us to come to Izhevsk. But my parents refused to leave Kiev. They remembered World War I and said that Germans were civilized, cultured people and would not do any harm to Jewish people. While they considered the option, I left for Izhevsk by myself.
It was a defense plant that had been evacuated from the town of Ramenskoye in the Moscow region. The plant manufactured equipment for planes. I was appointed deputy shop superintendent. I joined the Communist Party at this plant. Anybody could easily join the Party at that time, they submitted an application and received their membership card within a matter of days without any ceremony. I knew that one had to be a member of the Party to make a career. We worked under great pressure. New facilities for the plant were built right over our heads. We received a little bread by way of coupons. Workers’ families were starving. I remember people calling to me when they saw me in the shop, "Lubich, we would rather go to the front. We would rather die than see our children starve to death." What could I do to help them? I was starving too.
In Izhevsk my parents, my sister and brother stayed in a big four-room apartment in the center of the town that uncle Boris arranged for them. He also helped my father get a good job: Director of the Special Military Trade Agency. My father had tailor, shoe, and hosiery shops under his guise. My father got a good salary and received special food packages. As a result, we didn’t starve like many others in evacuation.
Within a month, Rosa and her parents arrived at Izhevsk. We got married at the registration office. Rosa decided to keep her maiden name. She went to work at the plant. Her parents moved in with my parents and we got a room in a private four-room house from the plant: we occupied one room. There was a plot of land near the house, and our landlords allowed us to use a small portion as a kitchen garden. Rosa and I grew vegetables: potatoes, beetroots - they were a great help.